Exhibiting Art In Georgian Ireland

This summer the Irish Georgian Society will host a world-class exhibition of eighteenth-century Irish paintings to mark the restoration of the City Assembly House and to commemorate the Society of Artists in Ireland who erected the building over 250 years ago.

Celebrating the building’s original incarnation as the first purpose-built public gallery in Britain and Ireland, the Exhibition will re-assemble works by Society of Artists members such as Thomas Roberts, Jonathan Fisher, James Forrester, Robert Carver, Robert Healy and Hugh Douglas Hamilton, including many pieces which were first displayed in the room in the series of exhibitions the Society held there between 1766 and 1780.

By honouring the pioneering spirit of these exhibitions, we aim to provide an insight into the fascinating range of artistic production taking place in eighteenth-century Ireland. As the exhibition catalogues reveal, Georgian Dublin was a hive of creativity, with landscape artists working alongside portraitists, history painters, sculptors, printers and draughtsmen in an astonishing range of media, including oil paint, pastel, marble, wood, glass, wax and hair.
With loans secured from national institutions and private collectors, this exhibition will reunite over eighty works by exhibiting Society of Artists’ members. An accompanying catalogue will evaluate these stimulating years; assessing Ireland’s first introduction to exhibition culture and the significant contribution it made to an increasingly self-confident national school of Irish art.

The public will have free access to the exhibition, with guided tours and exclusive events to mark the completion of the restoration of the City Assembly House. This will be one of 2018’s great cultural events in Ireland, and should not be missed.